Professional Documents
Culture Documents
doi:10.1093/cjres/rsu026
Advance Access publication 27 October 2014
This paper grounds the critique of the ‘smart city’ in its historical and geographical context.
Adapting Brenner and Theodore’s notion of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’, we suggest a
greater attention be paid to the ‘actually existing smart city’, rather than the exceptional or
paradigmatic smart cities of Songdo, Masdar and Living PlanIT Valley. Through a closer
analysis of cases in Louisville and Philadelphia, we demonstrate the utility of understanding
the material effects of these policies in actual cities around the world, with a particular focus
on how and from where these policies have arisen, and how they have unevenly impacted
the places that have adopted them.
Smart cities and urban governance One of the more significant examples is that
in the 21st century of the ‘smart city’, a somewhat nebulous idea
With the majority of the world’s population which seeks to apply the massive amounts of
residing in urban areas for the first time in digital data collected about society as a means
human history, cities are emerging as key sites to rationalise the planning and management of
of social experimentation and problem solv- cities (cf. Townsend, 2013). According to IBM,
ing in the 21st century (Glaeser, 2011; Grabar, one of the major corporate players promoting
2013; Lehrer, 2010; Katz and Bradley, 2013). this particular vision of the future city, policy-
This demographic pressure, coupled with the makers should approach cities as a “complex
twin crises of a rapidly warming global climate network of interconnected systems” (IBM,
and lingering economic instability has led to a 2010), constantly creating new data that can be
range of new conceptualisations of the city and used to “monitor, measure and manage” urban
concomitant policy prescriptions that place cit- life by “leveraging information to make better
ies at the centre of solutions to these problems. decisions…anticipating and resolving problems
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
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Shelton, Zook and Wiig
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The ‘actually existing smart city’
best, their failure to understand the historical the examples of Masdar, Songdo and Living
precursors to the smart city model. PlanIT Valley are the exceptions. As such, it is
Both geographers and planners have been more productive to focus on the implementa-
using increasingly sophisticated quantitative tion of smart city policies in particular places,
and computational methods to understand and how the differences between these places
cities since at least the 1950s. For geography, affect the outcomes of these interventions. So
this took the form of the so-called ‘quantita- rather than studying unrepresentative exem-
tive revolution’, in which the then-dominant plars and smart city imaginaries, the goal is to
idiographic, descriptive approach was over- understand how smart city policies and ideolo-
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Shelton, Zook and Wiig
While data is both the driving force behind central place in urban governance, acting as a
smart city initiatives, as well as the means by kind of master signifier or obligatory passage
which these initiatives are implemented, the point through which all other functions must
ultimate goal of the policies is fostering eco- position themselves (Callon, 1986). Data is now
nomic development, with success judged both the modus operandi and raison d’etre
accordingly. Thus, echoing earlier work on of this latest form of urban governance. This
entrepreneurial urbanism by Molotch (1976), new mode of data-driven urban governance
Cox and Mair (1988) and Harvey (1989), the is comprised of both relational and territorial
smart city idea largely coalesces around strate- elements, reflecting that contemporary urban
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The ‘actually existing smart city’
Bloomberg Philanthropies, which provide large for this funding, while the 2014 contest resulted
grants to municipal governments and technol- in submissions from over 150 European cities
ogy start-ups alike in order to promote data- (Bloomberg Philanthropies, 2014).
driven governance initiatives as small as the Ultimately, these new relationships between
development of a new smartphone or web- municipal governments and extra-local organi-
based application, or as large as a restructuring sations have resulted in the valuation of new
of municipal government priorities and opera- kinds of technical expertise within government.
tions (Bloomberg Philanthropies, 2011; Bracken, Rather than the kinds of deep knowledge of
2013). Similar initiatives exist elsewhere, such regulations or of place-based specificities
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Shelton, Zook and Wiig
cities, Louisville and Philadelphia, we demon- “determined [to] use data to improve the lives
strate how smart city projects help produce new of all Louisvillians” (Carroll, 2013; Fischer,
ways of thinking about different urban spaces, 2012), including releasing numerous datasets
as well as how these spaces are transformed as on vacant and abandoned properties to the
a result of such practices. public. In practice, however, data are often dis-
played in a Google Maps mashup-style ‘heat-
map’ display providing little insight beyond
Conflicting data-driven understandings in confirming the already well-known concentra-
Louisville’s West End tion in the West End (Figure 1).
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The ‘actually existing smart city’
shaped by the particular forms of data used— access to the mobile Internet was seen by both
whether in the form of narrative descriptions, IBM and city’s policymakers as an entry point
comparative graphics or digital maps—and the to providing new pathways to relevant skill
processes and actors behind its production. sets for entry-level jobs that would ultimately
bridge longstanding socio-economic divides in
Imagining a global Philadelphia through the city (Figure 3).
the smart city as a promotional vision In practice, however, it is evident that these
In Philadelphia, a smart city initiative called divides persist. While the residents targeted by
‘Digital On-Ramps’ emerged out of the city’s the initiative primarily lived in marginalised,
participation in IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge de-industrialised inner city neighbourhoods
in 2011 (IBM, 2011). This digital inclusion effort (Drexel University Program Manager and
sought to provide a mobile, Internet-based Drexel University Senior Web Architect, 2013),
application for workforce education that would the emerging information economy has clus-
train marginalised, low-literacy residents with tered in three other areas of the city: (i) the cen-
the skills to be competitive for jobs in the 21st tral business district surrounding City Hall, (ii)
century information economy (Nutter, 2012a). just west of downtown between the University
The ubiquity of smartphones and pervasive of Pennsylvania and Drexel University and (iii)
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Shelton, Zook and Wiig
in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, an innovation proximate to or within the Navy Yard (Ben
zone at the city’s southern periphery (Gyourko Franklin Technology Partners, 2014). That an
et al., 2005; Hodos, 2002; Simon and Alnutt, advanced manufacturing enterprise seen as
2007). The latter is a new place for public and central to the city’s smart city effort was not
private investment to flow, far removed both located in closer proximity to the neighbour-
socially and spatially from the poorer neigh- hoods and people supposedly targeted by the
bourhoods that the city’s smart city project was city’s new policies only further highlights the
meant to help. The target industry of the Digital incongruences between the smart city dis-
On-Ramps’ initial pilot was advanced manufac- course and the actually existing smart city as
turing (Drexel University Program Manager it has materialised in Philadelphia (Drexel
and Drexel University Senior Web Architect, University Program Manager and Drexel
2013), which in Philadelphia includes a wide- University Senior Web Architect, 2013).
ranging cluster of pharmaceutical, aerospace Even if education and workforce training
and petroleum refining industries (Select provided the means for marginalised residents
Greater Philadelphia, 2014), for the most part to obtain well-paying jobs in the information
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The ‘actually existing smart city’
economy, they still face challenges of personal In Philadelphia, the smart city has acted
mobility in travelling between home and work. primarily as a promotional vehicle, highlight-
Precisely because the smart city initiative did ing the city’s efforts to produce a competitive,
not extend beyond education and digital literacy entry-level workforce for the 21st century
programming, the ‘digital on-ramps’ were them- economy, despite achieving few meaningful
selves seen as a sufficient scope for a smart city results in this respect. But the fact that these
initiative, while longstanding socio-spatial ine- new smart city initiatives, such as the Navy Yard
qualities were left unaddressed. While all smart development, are so socially and spatially frag-
city projects certainly do not need to address all mented highlights the need to move beyond the
aspects of such inequality, the data-driven focus promotional rhetoric of smart city initiatives
of Digital On-Ramps illustrates how the popular to examine exactly where and how the smart
perception of smart city initiatives as an overarch- city impacts a city, recognising that rather than
ing, citywide urban policy concern often narrows solving problems of inequality, the smart city is
its focus onto much smaller deliverables that likely only to reproduce them in new ways.
may have minimal effect. Beyond the limitations
of this narrow focus, ‘Digital On-Ramps’ online
application has yet to move past the planning Conclusion
stage as of summer 2014, despite Philadelphia’s This paper has offered a strategy for grappling
mayor touting the project’s success at the IBM’s with the actually existing smart city and its more
Smarter Cities Summit nearly two years prior in subtle impacts on urban governance and plan-
late 2012 (Nutter, 2012b). ning. While the as-of-yet unrealised marketing
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Shelton, Zook and Wiig
rhetoric of the big technology companies has the minds of corporations, policymakers and
provided fertile ground for critique, it is not average citizens makes it an important means
enough to limit our attention to these discourses. through which cities are being (re)constructed
Instead, we have argued for a focus on the rela- in the 21st century. While we remain critical of
tionalities through which the smart city, as it the smart city model, both as it is offered up by
actually exists, has been produced, and on the large technology corporations and as it has actu-
territories in which this idea has taken root and ally been implemented in cities like Louisville
effected change. We have shown the ways that and Philadelphia, we also highlight the alterna-
data has historically been mobilised as a kind tive possibilities opened up by these new forms
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The ‘actually existing smart city’
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The ‘actually existing smart city’
Sennett, R. (2012) No one likes a city that’s too Townsend, A. M. (2013) Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic
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1982–2007: toward the postindustrial city, The Vanolo, A. (2014) Smartmentality: the smart city as
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131: 395–444. Wilson, M. W. (2011) Data matter(s): legitimacy, cod-
Taylor, A. S., Lindley, S., Regan, T., Sweeney, D. (2014) ing, and qualifications-of-life, Environment and
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